Archive for the ‘Minnesota’ Category

I once asked the editor of the liberal newspaper where I was doing my undergraduate internship in Minneapolis to write a letter of recommendation for me. The recommendation was sealed and it was a couple of years later before I would come across it in my file at work.

I had assumed the reference letter would be spectacularly glowing. And it was, but not in the way that I had expected. At 20-years old, I had come in as an intern but ended up doing investigative pieces that landed more than once on the cover. This was because soon after arriving, I was quickly asked to field the story leads that were intended for the paper’s star reporter, who had gone into rehab for longer than his usual time. The other star reporter had quit because she wanted to have a life. The rest of the staff specialized in arts coverage. That just left the eager-to-prove-herself intern. I dug deep and developed stories on a family crushed by mental illness,

One Brand Fits All

Haitian drug dealers stuck in Minnesota prisons, and I interviewed the patients of the first heart and lung transplants in the world, who shared their stories publically for the first time with me.

None of that was mentioned in the letter of recommendation. Instead, the editor wrote three moving paragraphs about how impressed she was with me–not with my stories but with my ability to do the stories at all– being as I was Muslim female. I do not believe I ever once talked to her about religion nor do I remember anyone asking me about my religion. Obviously, my Arab ethnicity came up always with the inevitable question, “What an interesting name. Where did it come from?” But there were never questions about my religion. At least not in front of me. And I wore no physical manifestations of my religion, and religion, mine or anyone else’s, wasn’t a subject I found remotely engaging at the time. This was also years before 9-11, when you rarely even heard the word “Muslim.”

Yet I had been branded: a Muslim female, i.e. the most pitied female brand. The editor wrote of how she had so much admiration for how I, a young Muslim female, could talk to just about anyone, even the strippers and hookers I befriended for a story. Perhaps I was slightly shy around men but that was understood, implicit in my religion’s shunning of women—at least that’s what the subtext pretty clearly said.

So there was purity implied in my Muslimness—that explained why I wouldn’t be exposed to strippers and hookers as a Muslim, and I would get flustered around men. If anyone had asked me, I could have told her Christians don’t have the domain on prostitution. There are Muslim hookers out there. But I wouldn’t have mixed with them either under normal circumstances. Because I had grown up in middle class neighborhood that weren’t the chosen milieu for hookers, at least not publically, whatever their religion. My face turned red talking to handsome men because I was a chubby girl with low self-esteem from years of fat jokes—Muslims make those, too. I was glad, though, the editor appreciated how I dressed professionally, because somehow, I read between the lines, I had some fashion sense that didn’t involve a black cloak.

She admired me—I was an exclusive, limited edition designer brand of Muslim female, the token one who wasn’t afraid to break away from my oppression and work as a journalist who talked to non-Muslims. I was brave, yes. But so would any shy young woman who did those stories. But it was my defiance of my religion, which I didn’t even know I was defying, that made me brave in her eyes. Proof that it is possible for one black cloth not to fit all.

I leaned more at that newspaper than in any of my classes that year, including the lessons from the abused women in homeless shelters whose stories I told. (I never mentioned the religion of those women in those articles. They were not Muslims, though.) But I taught no one anything. Because I didn’t know I was a poster girl for Muslim Women We Admire, and that we (the deprived sisterhood of Muslim women that I didn’t even know existed, let alone was a member of) are all viewed as an inferior brand and in need of saving and rebranding, unlike other types of women.

literature and food circles today. Both these Middle Eastern imports—Rumi and pomegranates– have gone from near obscurity to near cliché levels in Western cultural hotspots over the past few years. Yet another reason for the pomegranate to laugh in Rumi’s poem.

I remember my first pomegranate. I was seven, late in life for a Middle Easterner to be introduced to all its wonder. But we were living in Minnesota then, and the even the mango had yet barely made an appearance. One Saturday, my father beheld, much to his surprise and delight, a small pomegranate resting amidst the fake grass in the produce section at Byerly’s. Byerly’s was the far away luxury supermarket we occasionally took a road trip to in the hopes finding just such a food memento. Byerly’s had already given us whole dates and a few inches of sugar cane and a coconut. I liked the store mostly because it was where Mary shopped in the opening credits to Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Back in our kitchen, our father warned us to stand back as he broke open the pomegranate, carefully chasing any of the precious luminescent red drops that escaped. My brother and I chomped on the sweet seeds, smiling while trying not to let the juice burst out our mouths as my mother hovered around us with a box of Kleenex at the ready, fearing that we would permanently splatter our shirts crimson. Indeed, the pomegranate leaves its mark on our clothes and fingers and souls. This is why it appears in Middle Eastern poems, books, and films, like Najwa Najjar’s award winning Pomegranates and Myrrh.

Every trendy restaurant in London and Los Angeles seems to have found a place for pomegranate on the menu, particularly using the lush, goopy, sour pomegranate molasses. American cuisine is innovative and evolving—always the anticipation of a new taste sensation replacing the old, just like a new TV season. We look back at wheat germ and pineapple upside down cake the way we look back Mayberry RFD. Middle Eastern cuisine is based on centuries of tradition, the comfort of savoring the expected, plus or minus this ingredient or that ingredient. That includes plus or minus the pomegranate: as the primary dressing ingredient in Lebanese fattoush, as a broth in which kibbe is simmered in Aleppo, Syria, as a topping for baba ghanoush in Jordan. However, much like Rumi is to Iranian (or Persian) poetry, the pomegranate is to Iranian (or Persian) cuisine. Iranians seem to be able to successfully stew just about anything in it. I love this recipe from my friend Anita Amirrezvani, inspired by her new critically-acclaimed novel Equal of the Sun.

If you buy a pomegranate,
buy one whose ripeness
has caused it to be cleft open
with a seed-revealing smile.

Its laughter is a blessing,
for through its wide-open mouth
it shows its heart,
like a pearl in the jewel box of spirit.
The red anemone laughs, too,
but through its mouth you glimpse a blackness.

A laughing pomegranate
brings the whole garden to life.
Keeping the company of the holy
makes you one of them
Whether you are stone or marble,
you will become a jewel
when you reach a human being of heart.

Plant the love of the holy ones within your spirit;
don’t give your heart to anything
but the love of those whose hearts are glad.
Don’t go to the neighborhood of despair:
there is hope.
Don’t go in the direction of darkness:
suns exist.

The heart guides you to the neighborhood of the
saints;
the body takes you to the prison of water and earth.
Give your heart the food of holy friends;
seek maturity from those who have matured.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote a great review of The Night Counter in its Sunday edition:http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/52617702.html (Link also posted under The Night Counter Press & Reviews here)
But that is not the only reason I was excited to do a reading for Mizna (www.mizna.org) in Minneapolis on Saturday. Minnesota has been a part of my life since I was five-years old and we moved there from Chicago, and I spent several of my growing up years there, as well as attending the University of Minnesota. Back then, there were no sushi restaurants and luxury spas—in fact, I’m not sure anyone would have even known what those were 20 years ago—and one of the few foreign accents you heard were from my parents’ lips. It’s a lot more global and trendsetting now, but it’s still mercifully Minnesota. The Twin Cities are notorious for their winters, but with some training and effusive enthusiasm, a very common Minnesota trait, they can be charming. Still nothing beats a perfect summer day– sun, blue sky, shady trees, lakes, walleye-on-a-stick stands, and soda pop. Here are some other reasons I like Minnesota:

1. Everyone talks like me. No one ever asks, “Are you from New Jersey or something?” My slight Minnesota accent needs no explanation.
2. When people say, “You have a good day now,” they actually sound sincere.
3. To this day, some 40 years later, people still point out to you locations that appear in the opening credits of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” particularly the exact spot where she tosses her hat in the air.
4. Multi-colored Mohawks and Mullets

Downtown Minneapolis

Reasons I love Minnesota

never seem to go out of style here—they ebb and flow in number, but I always run into at least one or two whenever I visit
5. People actually follow traffic signals and do yield to others, the Scandinavian stock here forever dominating the culture, and ja, that’s a good thing.
6. You meet vegetarians who like to go hunting and ice fishing.
7. There is a great respect for the Native Americans who first settled this area (although the poverty and disease within that community remains appalling)
8. It’s one of the most-educated and/or most well-read places you’ll ever visit, whether you’re talking to a college professor or a pro-wrestler governor.
9. You can actually drink the tap water.
10. I’ve never had to question the loyalty or honesty of the people I’ve called friends here, even family friends that go back to grade school.